This is a Legends in Leather duplicate of Burt Lancaster’s rig in “Vera Cruz.” The deep V cut angles the butt outward for a faster draw and was the trademark of gun coach Rodd Redwing.

My wife thinks it's weird, but readers will understand: Whenever I watch a Hollywood western--whether an old classic like "Red River," a cult film like "Tombstone," a modern remake such as "3:10 to Yuma" or any of the great TV western oldies like "Gunsmoke," "Have Gun-Will Travel" or "Bonanza"--I am riveted by the gun rigs. Mesmerized is a better word. More than the actors or the guns themselves, it is the leatherwork that often defines the characters and their places in the plot.

What would William (Hopalong Cassidy) Boyd have been without his unique black-and-white double rig? Would Roy Rogers have remained the unquestioned King of the Cowboys had he not been wearing his regal two-toned, silver studded double buscadero holsters?

And none of television's early gunslingers would have been as fast on the draw without Arvo Ojala's metal-lined holsters, which, during the 1950s and 60s, could be seen in practically every western coming out of the Warner Brothers back lot. To be sure, westerns of the silver screen and the small screen are indelibly bound together by leather.

While the first western, "The Great Train Robbery" (1903), was filmed in New Jersey, western filmmakers soon did go west--to California, where they had no problem rounding up real cowboys to act like...well, real cowboys. These authentic ranch hands supplied their own horses, guns and holsters, including rigs made by Hermann H. Heiser, S.D. Myers and George Lawrence.

One wonders what, if anything, the real Wyatt Earp strapped on when he was filmed in "The Half Breed" in 1919, as in real life he usually slipped his pistols into his coat pockets. But even though William S. Hart was the first western superstar of the silent era, he wore comparatively plain (but authentic) gun rigs.

This all changed in the 1930s. "Talkies" had come in, and with them, the singing cowboy--often appearing with fancy clothes and just as fancy silver-studded, hand-laced gun belts.

About a decade before, the buscadero holster had become prominent on the silver screen. This holster, which passed through a slit in the gun belt, kept the holster from sliding and provided a more stable gun rig for movie making. As incredulous as it may sound, filming a western was often more taxing on gun leather than walking the streets of Dodge or punching cattle.

Many years ago, I visited the late Roy Rogers, and he showed me his first fancy movie holster, a hand-carved double buscadero that Ed Gilmore made for him in 1938. The leather was cracked, the silver studs were tarnished and semi-dented, and the billet was broken.

Originally this rig, which can be seen in many of Roy's early pictures, such as "Shine On Harvest Moon" and "Wall Street Cowboy," was natural tan with two-tone black-dyed highlights accenting the carving. However, during one movie-making episode, the script called for Roy to engage in a rough-and-tumble fistfight in a muddy stream while wearing his sixguns. As a result, his beautiful leather showpiece got thoroughly soaked, which caused the black dye to run.

The gun rig was restained a single tan color by the prop department so filming could resume. But from that time on, moviegoers never got to see Gilmore's original two-tone version of Roy's rig.

"To me it's amazing to examine the originals," says Jim Lockwood of Legends in Leather (legendsinleath er.com), "because as a kid you saw it on the screen, and it looked like absolute perfection. And then, when you get up close and looked at it, some of it is very crude, like it was thrown together."